Here we go, an overdue Open Thread! BBC went into food bank frenzy yesterday. I was invited into the BBC NI studio to take part in a discussion on such. My view is that Food Banks are street theatre agitprop sponsored by the left. To my amusement, the BBC in Belfast put on a caller from Cheltenham (!) who gave a tale of woe and explained how Food Banks saved his life. The particularity becomes the generality in the eyes of the BBC, as they do everything possible to help Labour. With an improving economy and falling unemployment the Left need SOMETHING to keep the gospel of despair going so welcome to the great Food Bank meme.

Remember this from 2011 when Richard Black tried to persuade us that it was the dumb, ignorant Anglo-Saxons who were climate deniers while the rest of the world wailed as it burned?

The world wide web, where climate change is most vociferously debated, is predominantly an Anglo-Saxon medium.

For we native English speakers who’ve never needed to become fluent in other tongues but speak the language of climate change daily, this raises an intriguing question: is it possible that we’re getting a distorted view of the “climate debate” globally, simply because we’re missing what’s going on elsewhere?

“The weight of this study would suggest that, out of this wide range of factors, the presence of politicians espousing some variation of climate scepticism, the existence of organised interests that feed sceptical coverage, and partisan media receptive to this message, all play a particularly significant role in explaining the greater prevalence of sceptical voices in the print media of the USA and the UK.”

To those who despair of the success of sceptical lobbying, the message is clear: learn one of the languages of Brazil, China or India.

 

 

WUWT suggests he’s wrong…

Climate Change … Who Cares?

Thanks to the blog of the irrepressible Hilary Ostrov, a long-time WUWT commenter, I found out about a poll gone either horribly wrong or totally predictably depending on your point of view. It’s a global poll done by the United Nations, with over six million responses from all over the planet, and guess what?

The revealed truth is that of the sixteen choices given to people regarding what they think are the important issues in their lives, climate change is dead last. Not only that, but in every sub-category, by age, by sex, by education, by country grouping, it’s right down at the bottom of the list. NOBODY thinks it’s important.

Now, people are always saying how the US is some kind of outlier in this regard, because polls in the US always put climate change down at the bottom, whereas polls in Europe generally rate it somewhat higher. But this is a global poll, with people chiming in from all over the planet. The top fifteen countries, in order of the number of people voting, were Mexico, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Philippines, Thailand, Cameroon, United States, Ghana, Rwanda, Brazil, Jordan, and Morocco … so this appears to be truly representative of the world, which is mostly non-industrialized nations.

So the next time someone tries to claim that climate change is “the most important challenge facing the world” … point them to the website of the study, and gently inform them that the rest of the world doesn’t buy that kind of alarmist hogwash for one minute.

 

 

The Media’s hypocrisy is quite stunning, the BBC’s most of all of course as it tells us it holds itself to a higher standard and is the news organisation that sets the standards for the rest of the pack to follow.

Recently they have been shouting a lot about how dishonest politicians are, asking why politicians, especially the Tories, won’t tell us about the true state of the nation’s finances.

Of course, in reality, that is the last thing the BBC wants you to know as it would be hard to justify its barrage of anti-austerity propaganda that it pumps out daily if the economy is ‘utterly terrible’.

Similarly the same goes for immigration and Europe…the BBC has hidden the truth about immigration for years, steadfastly refusing to examine it in detail and consistently ignoring the downsides to immigration…only recently having to tackle the subject with any degree of honesty because many politicians have had to at least pay lip service to the concerns of the population about immigration……and forced to do so by one man and his party…Nigel Farage and UKIP.

Now when you hear the BBC moaning about the ‘dishonesty of politicians’ just remember this is the BBC that tried, still tries, to undermine and finish off UKIP as a political force, that tried to shut Farage and UKIP up.

The BBC had no interest in talking about immigration until forced to do so…..and will rapidly revert to that position given half a chance.

Farage forced the pace and set the ball rolling on immigration.

All of which is backed up by this revelation from a BBC insider, an ex-insider, Paul Lambert who has jumped ship to become the communications guru at UKIP and says…..

“Over the past few years I have been following the work of UKIP and Nigel Farage and I feel that he is changing British politics for the better. I am delighted to be able to add my experience to his team. He has been one of the best, most hardworking and most normal political figures I have worked with, and trust me I have seen the lot”.

“UKIP is today the place to be if you want to be a part of a party that is changing the face of British politics for the better, and providing a new, clear and honest voice”.

 

The BBC are being nice to him at present but as one commenter says at Guido it won’t last long…..

Watch the remaining featherbedded stooges turn on him now.

 

The BBC rushed to tell us……

World on course for warmest year

The UK Met Office says the observed temperatures would be highly unlikely without the influence of greenhouse gases produced by humans.

“There is no standstill in global warming.”

 

Not sure the ‘Central England Temperature Anomaly’ can be describes as ‘all of the UK’ let alone ‘The World’….but let’s not be too critical…we’ll leave that to Christopher Booker:

Last week’s claims that 2014 is set to be ‘the hottest year ever’ are frankly a load of nonsense, says Christopher Booker.

Led by the BBC, the usual media suspects were quick to trumpet last week’s claims by the Met Office and the World Meteorological Organisation that 2014 is set to be “the hottest year ever”. It’s funny that the rest of us hadn’t noticed; least of all those citizens of North America and Russia whose lives were lately disrupted by record snowfalls. It is true that the temperature records compiled by the avid warmists of the Met Office and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (the one formerly run by climate activist James Hansen) have managed to show this year squeaking just ahead of 2010 as “the hottest year since records began”. But the much more comprehensive and reliable satellite records agree that 2014 is way down the list, with six of the past 16 years ahead of it.

 

At least there is one real journalist at the BBC who raises a few questions…..

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

 

The BBC is always busy looking for ‘proof’ of global warming….here they are in Oz in July….

Artificial snow on slopes of hotter Australia

Australia is sometimes the petri dish of climate change – a place where global warming is not just a theoretical concept but a tangible reality.

Oops….just a month later….

Ready, set…snow! Australia blanketed in a winter wonderland as cold front delivers a brisk start to the weekend

And this is from June a month before the BBC paints its picture of doom….which really shows how untrustworthy the BBC is…they knew there was heavy snow in Oz and yet they report ‘artifical snow’ stories….

Best snowfalls in a decade forecast for eastern Australia. Strap yourselves in for the megablizzard

While Australia rejoices in the heaviest June snowfalls this century, with the majority of lifts at all resorts set to open by the weekend, the Kiwis have barely got two snowflakes to rub together.

Of course the late snow on Mt Buller is an entirely new phenomenon isn’t it?…

“Historically speaking though it is not unusual for us to have no snow on Opening Weekend,” says David McNamara from the Victorian ski resort of Mt Buller.

Ahh…an explanation…the reporter is the never-reliable Jon Donnison telling us that the snow is so late and so thin that artificial snow is needed.

Really?  The snow came, in bucket loads, two weeks ‘late’ into the skiing season…..

Experienced weather watchers are calling it the storm of the century. They’re saying it could snow on and off, but mostly on, for the next 10 days.

And now the megablizzard has arrived. The NSW resorts of Thredbo and Perisher received 40cm and 50cm respectively overnight. Hotham, Falls Creek and Mt Buller (pictured below) in Victoria all reported similar totals.

A spokesman for Thredbo confirmed to news.com.au that as of about 3.30pm, 80cm of snow had now fallen in the past 24 hours.

“It’s an incredible amount for June, I’m not sure it’s a record, but it has set us up for the rest of the season,” he said.

The official Australian ski season started two weeks ago but up till yesterday then, there had been a desperately thin snow base with only a lift or two turning at the NSW resorts of Perisher and Thredbo. Victorian resorts, which are a little lower than their NSW counterparts, had nothing but grass.

That all started to change yesterday and after a brief lull in the early morning hours, the storm appears to be intensifying now.

Here’s what a user called “Snowblowa” said on the forums on leading snow industry website ski.com.au:

“Seriously when was the last time we were looking at a potential 100cm event to kick off the season properly with potential mega follow up?!!!!!!! We gotta savour this, it’s gunna be awesome, we might be saying in five years “remember late June in 2014”. Besides, we are so over due, last few years in General have been pretty average.”

 

So let’s see…that’s deep snow and lots of it.

The BBC is obviously trying hard here…they even drag in Al Gore who tells us he isn’t impressed by Oz PM Tony Abbot who is somewhat sceptical about the extent of the threat that is global warming….that’ll be the Al Gore who made a video with copious ‘errors’ in it that misled viewers about climate change and had to be ‘corrected’….and the same Al Gore who has massive investements in green technology companies reliant on the climate change bandwagon to keep rolling and bringing in the dollars.

Funny old world when a man who expressed so much contempt for the Westminster ‘gang’ as he calls them, now seeks to rejoin as an MP despite, apparently, the fact that the “writing is on the wall for Westminster”.….what’s more curious is that the BBC don’t seem to notice this hypocrisy in their grand analysis…nor do they notice that when the Slippery Salmond says:

“We won’t have any deal with the Tories – they are not trusted by the people of Scotland” he said.

…the truth is the Tories are just as ‘trusted’ as the SNP…..

At the 2010 General Election, the SNP polled 19.9 per cent and won 491,386 votes, while the Conservative Party polled 16.7 per cent and won 412,855 votes. Yet it is the SNP that has been allowed to set the agenda in Scotland, and to call the shots on the possible future of the Union, while the Conservatives have been painted as pariahs, and deemed about as welcome in Scotland as a nationwide dose of the clap.

 

 

But then the BBC has always had a soft spot for anyone who wants to destroy the United Kingdom…be it Communists, Muslim fundamentalists, Brussels Bureaucrats or the SNP.

Alright folks, the weekend beckons and time for a fresh one of these Open Threads. Enjoy and detail the bias!

Apologies, no time to do this justice but here’s some rough workings to get your teeth into….

Labour’s spending as a proportion of GDP in 1998?  36%

The Coalition’s projected spending in 2019-20?        35.2%

Hardly an enormous difference and yet apparently ‘utterly terrifying’ according to the BBC.

There is an election coming and the BBC has been running a campaign to disparage everything the government does.

The BBC has been extraordinarily critical, not to say dishonest, in its reporting of the Autumn Statement…..telling us we are heading back to a 1930’s depression era economy.

The BBC’s Norman Smith saying:

“While there was a lot of enthusiasm on the Conservative benches and political joy at a lot of the popular measures, when you sit down and read the Office for Budget Responsibility report it reads like a book of doom.

“It is utterly terrifying, suggesting that spending will have to be hacked back to the levels of the 1930s as a proportion of GDP.

“That is an extraordinary concept, you’re back to the land of Road to Wigan Pier.”

I wonder where the Beeboids steal their ideas from…could it be the newspaper they read such as the Guardian in 2011?:

Today the book seems curiously relevant to our own distressed times. An Old Etonian prime minister, in a cabinet stuffed with public school boys, has embarked upon the most radical reduction of public spending in generations, making cuts that have prompted robust criticism of their pace and scale. North and south are pulling apart once more – not yet to the extent where Orwell could describe his journey as if “venturing among savages”, but getting there.

 

Here is a verdict on Orwell’s book….and probably one that could be recycled for the BBC’s reporting…an enormous pile of piffle…..

Jack Hilton, the man who set him [Orwell] on the road to Wigan, hated the book, judging it a failure and falling out with the author. “So George went to Wigan and he might have stayed at home. He wasted money, energy and wrote piffle,” was his damning verdict.

 

Evan Davis (Labour) on Newsnight tells us that:

“You have to go back to the depression of the 1930s to find a crisis comparable to the one we are in — it is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”

 

Now that’s just nonsense…and highly political.

For a start Orwell wrote ‘The Road To Wigan Pier’ in 1937…so about a period before 1937…and the OBR quote the BBC refers to actually says we could have spending as a ratio of GDP at a level equivalent to that in 1938  and certainly not the depression era of the early 1930’s which the BBC is linking to….

Government consumption of goods and services falls to its lowest share of GDP since at least 1948 – when comparable National Accounts data begins – and since 1938 using a historical dataset compiled by the Bank of England

 

But note this:

The UK’s National Accounts data have been revised substantially since our March forecast. In addition to the usual annual revisions process, the ONS has implemented the 2010 European System of Accounts (ESA10). The main consequence has been to increase the measured size of the economy. Relative to the data available at the time of our March forecast, nominal GDP in 2013 has been revised up by 6 per cent (around £90 billion)

 

So we are not comparing like with like….the GDP figure has been inflated by new accounting rules from Europe and so any cut in spending as a ratio of GDP will look worse.

Not only that but in 1998 Labour took us to similar low levels of spending….the OBR says…

As Chart 1.1 illustrates, total public spending is now projected to fall to 35.2 per cent of GDP in 2019-20

 

Labour’s spending in 1998 was 36%…a 0.8% difference then….hardly a massive difference….was that ‘utterly terrifying’ in 1998?

The BBC has been telling us that the Tories must answer the important, critical, question about how they will find the cuts, or savings, in government spending…apparently ‘critics’ and ‘people’ were asking this question….hmmm…does the BBC mean ‘Labour’ are asking the question and the BBC is doing Labour’s dirty work for them?…..however when it comes to Labour they actually praise Ed Ball’s refusal to answer claiming that he is intent on analysing the situation and will not be rushed into making a judgement…in other words he hasn’t got a plan and certainly doesn’t intend to let the Public know about one if he did have any thoughts on the subject….

The OBR report is more honest about what the parties say…curious the BBC missed this bit:

The recovery now looks stronger, with real GDP regaining its pre-recession peak in the third quarter of 2013, three quarters earlier than in the previous vintage of data.
The Conservatives have said they would look to cut welfare spending by more, so that they could cut public services by less. And the Liberal Democrats have said that they would be willing to borrow more to finance capital spending that would increase growth, and also to increase taxes on the relatively well-off. Labour has said that it would “balance the books and deliver a surplus on the current budget and falling national debt in the next Parliament. How fast we can go will depend on the state of the economy and the public finances we inherit.”

 

Now the BBC’s Adam Parsons told us that Labour had in fact, if you look closely, announced more plans to make cuts than the Tories….but he failed to lay out exactly what they were….and the OBR clearly doesn’t agree with the BBC on that.

The BBC doesn’t bother with this from the OBR:

On our central forecast, the Coalition Government is on track to meet its fiscal mandate – to borrow only what it needs to pay for investment, adjusting for the state of the economy, at the end of the five-year forecast – with £50.6 billion to spare. This implies an 80 per cent probability of success given the accuracy of past forecasts

 

The Telegraph does a fine job in critiquing the BBC’s coverage…Danny Cohen will be upset:

Once again, the BBC shows its true colours

Licence fee payers deserve better than the preposterous partisan bias of the BBC

David Cameron attacks BBC over ‘Wigan Pier’ cuts coverage

David Cameron’s spokesman says BBC coverage likening cuts programme to Depression-era Britain was ‘hyperbolic’

Tories at war with ‘biased BBC’

David Cameron and George Osborne furious over Autumn Statement coverage which they claim contained ‘systematic exaggeration’

Is Britain back on the Road to Wigan Pier?

As sparks fly between ministers and the BBC, the former mining town is yet to forgive George Orwell

Danny Cohen tells us that the BBC is an intrinsic part of the democratic process…I think it could be argued that it is the opposite and indeed encourages and supports terrorists and race hustlers who are intent on creating racial and religious conflict where they can for their own political purposes.

The BBC gave blanket coverage to the killing in Ferguson of a black thug by a white police officer and yet ignored the brutal murder of a white man by a gang of non-white youths who beat him to death with hammers.

The BBC still hasn’t reported on that savage killing…however they do try to play politics with it….trying to make out that any criticism of the lack of coverage is merely a ‘conservative’, right wing conspiracy theory that is completely unjustified in this ironic article…..

Are the media ignoring another St Louis killing?

The BBC completely accepts, without evidence, that the thug who died in Ferguson was killed purely because he was black. The white officer was clearly racist in their opinion….when as said, there’s no evidence of that at all.

Here is the BBC take on it:

Well, slavery may have long gone, but apprehending someone because they could be up to no good, simply because they’re black is still police policy in much of the land.

 

The killing in St Louis of  white man is automatically assumed to have no racial motive, and it probably hasn’t, but that isn’t the point…the point is the BBC’s different reaction to both stories.

Today we have Ferguson all over again with the BBC giving yet more blanket coverage to the death of a black man when being arrested by white police officers….a white man’s life is obviously worthless to the BBC.

The BBC one again reports this from one point of view…that if a black man dies being arrested by white police officers those officers killed him because he was black….the BBC totally accepts the premise that the officers are racist.

The BBC has been reporting all day on the radio that the police had the man in a chokehold and he died because of it… they have been playing a recording of the arrest and misled listeners to believe that the alleged ‘chokehold’ is still in place when the man says repeatedly ‘I can’t breathe’ and was the cause of his death.

The video of the arrest shows that the hold was in place the first time the man gave a strangulated cry that he couldn’t breathe and the officer released the hold but Eric Garner continued to say, loudly and clearly, that he couldn’t breathe as the officers restrained him….but why was he having trouble breathing?

The death is unfortunate but the main cause of death, as the BBC reports, was…..

The city’s medical examiner’s office found in the summer that Mr Garner’s death was caused by “the compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police”.

 

Also….and not reported by the BBC….

Garner’s acute and chronic bronchial asthma, obesity and hypertensive cardiovascular disease were contributing factors, the medical examiner determined.

 

The BBC merely says….

The detainee, who is asthmatic, can be heard shouting repeatedly, “I can’t breathe!”.

 

The BBC places undue emphasis on the chokehold…

New York’s medical examiner had already ruled that the death of Eric Garner was a homicide, and that the chokehold contributed to it.

 

Yes, indeed he did say that…but as shown above he said a lot more besides which show that the chokehold wasn’t the main cause of death,  if a cause at all…..so why is the BBC still associating the ‘chokehold’ with his death and emphasisng it above all else?… the chokehold was said to be a contributory factor…but as he died a while after the hold was used, and used for a short period, that must be  a minimal factor…his own heatlh problems being the relevant  factor.

Eric Garner death: What next for the chokehold?

Eric Garner was being arrested for selling cigarettes illegally on the street and from the video you can hear he has been, at the very least, advised not to continue with that trade in the past….he then resists arrest and the officers apply the hold to restrain him.

Would they have done that if he was white?  The BBC is suggesting not…but on what evidence?  Eric Garner was a large man and not too happy in the video, he wasn’t going to ‘come quietly’….were the police supposed to just walk away because he was black?

This is not evidence of white police officers being racist but of the BBC’s own racism in their assumption that the police were racist.  It is also evidence of the BBC’s own tendency, a dangerous one, to incite racial conflict and inflame tensions…..undoubtedly this will be getting a large audience in Black communities in the UK and will be feeding into that grievance mindset with a stereotype fed to them by the likes of the BBC that white people are all racist and out to oppress them.

Note that the man reporting this:

Will black Americans finally get a fair deal?

Well, slavery may have long gone, but apprehending someone because they could be up to no good, simply because they’re black is still police policy in much of the land.

…is the BBC’s Clive Myrie…..

And note the BBC’s reporting of the verdict of ‘homicide’ on the death of Eric Garner…

New York’s medical examiner had already ruled that the death of Eric Garner was a homicide, and that the chokehold contributed to it.

To you and me that means murder…but not to the medical examiners….

“Homicide” in this context doesn’t mean what you think. It’s one of five categories medical examiners use to label causes of death and it indicates that “someone’s intentional actions led to the death of another person,” says Gregory G. Davis, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. The other four labels are suicide, accident, natural, and undetermined, Davis says.

‘Intentional actions’ does not mean ‘intending to kill’…but their intent to restrain leading to the death…even if an accidental and unintended result.

The BBC’s use of that word without explanation of the context can only lead to the wrong impression of the verdict on the police’s action..careless use of words or intended by the BBC?

The BBC is an undemocratic, rampaging beast that is pretty much unaccountable and has been given carte blanche to do as it pleases, politicians too afraid to make the necessary changes to it, preferring instead to tinker around the edges…..hence we get no real, meaningful change to the method of financing the BBC and more importantly we get no change to its highly politicised, left-wing world view of how things should be.

Last night Danny Cohen, the BBC’s Director of Television, made a speech…here are some of the highlights:

I believe that the BBC is one of the most important institutions in the United Kingdom.

It is an intrinsic part of our democracy.

It delivers education and deep joy and stimulation to 97 percent of the population every month.

It would be crazy to damage, undermine or deflate what we have.

Part of the democratic process?  An organisation that attempts to close down debate on climate change, on immigration, on Europe, on Islam, on the Middle East.  An organisation that tries to shut parties like UKIP out of the political argument and actively worked to destroy ‘unacceptable’ organisations like the EDL …and has presenters who often express the desire for a Chinese, authoritarian type government that ‘gets things done’…ie without having the inconvenience of having to get the approval of the people.

No not part of the democratic process….or not one that facilitates democracy but rather ‘poisons the well’.

Cohen reels off a list of BBC programmes that he believes illustrate the importance of the BBC to life in the UK, nay the world, and says…

No broadcaster in the world provides this range, this quality, this commitment to all audiences.

 

Well, I suspect Sky, or even YouTube, might argue with that.

He comes to an end with a request that other Media groups stop criticising the BBC…

Of course, you will always hold us to account – and so you should.

But….I feel confident you will agree that a BBC that can flourish in a world of globalised media companies is the right thing for the UK and the right thing for audiences.

Perhaps this is time for a little less of the critical friend and a bit more of the friend.

That’ll be the BBC that tried to close down its political and commercial rival News International and crushes local news and rival magazine publishers.

With friends like Cohen whispering sweet nothings in your ear I’d  buy my own drinks and keep one eye open all night.

Deep joy and stimulation to one and all this winter holiday!!